


Three Steps

by twobirdsonesong



Category: CrissColfer - Fandom, Glee RPF
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Broken Engagement, Complete, Established Relationship, Getting Back Together, Happy Ending, M/M, RPF, Recovery, Rehabilitation, Romance, Vomiting, crisscolfer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-27
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1533569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsonesong/pseuds/twobirdsonesong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the toll of the pressures of celebrity life becomes too much for Darren, he turns to drink to dull the world, but the cost of his increasing dependency is too much for either him, or Chris, to pay.  After Chris breaks off their secret engagement,  Darren checks himself into rehab in order to repair his life, and hopefully, his relationship with Chris, the one person who means the most to him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This work was written as a commission for lokicorey and is based off their provided prompt.
> 
> Warnings: contains discussions of alcohol abuse and rehab

The pitched-roofed diner sits two hours somewhere outside of Los Angeles, three in heavy traffic, but it’s only twenty minutes from the Sunrise Ranch and Recovery Center.

 

The booths are cracked and creaking and some of the tables wobble obnoxiously when knocked by a weary elbow or a restless knee, but the floors are clean and the food is incredible.  And a carefully placed, folded-up napkin can often fix the most uneven of tables.  A man named Joe works in the kitchen with his cousin, Steph, and her daughter, Jane, takes care of the customers.  Joe’s son does the bookkeeping even though he has a full time job at an accounting firm and his brother takes care of any plumbing issues and Darren knows all of this because he asks.

  
Darren found the diner on his first outing from the center.  A member of the support staff had been required to accompany him and he’d been allowed exactly one hour outside of the facility.  He’d driven 20 minutes down the highway in one of the center’s cars before he’d caught sight of the diner.  The drive back gave him just a spare 20 minutes to order something and eat before he had to pay and get back into the car to make it through the front door of Sunrise before the clock ticked over on his curfew.  Well, his support staff shadow had paid for his scrambled eggs and overly buttered toast, since part of the program had been the voluntary restriction of his money.  His wallet and credit cards weren’t the only thing he’d willingly left at the door when he checked in.  But 20 minutes of hot, fluffy eggs and perfectly cooked bacon and a steaming mug of tea and the sweetest smile from Jane had been all he needed to know that the diner, the booth, the plate of food, was everything he needed in that moment.

 

_Find a place to center yourself._

 

It’s the kind of place where thick men, bowed from hours and hours sitting in the dark cab of a truck, turn in unison when the front door opens and a stranger walks in.  $100 jeans make a man a stranger to a room full of Carhartt and sweat-stained baseball caps so worn the team logo is barely visible.  A trim waist makes a man a stranger in an unknown land when the lives of most revolve around the endless miles eaten up by the heavy tires of trucks and trailers.  Blue eyes, revealed by the removal of dark sunglasses, that scan the tables and booths for a long unseen if hopefully still familiar face calls a man a stranger in a group of men who keep their heads down and their eyes on their plates while their legs still vibrate with the endless motion of the road.

 

Darren watches, breath caught somewhere between his voice and his heart, as Chris finally finds where he’s seated in his worn booth, hands wrapped tightly around the mug of tea.  He can’t tell if the look on Chris’ face as he steps around the old man with the cane who has a tendency to block the path to the seating area is one of relief or wariness at the sight of Darren.  It feels like he’s looking at Darren the way people in great tales look at a returning solider, or a long lost sailor, or a missing lover.

 

There is hope there, but apprehension too, in the tightness of his mouth even though Chris is trying to smile in greeting, in the shaded color of his eyes as his gaze flickers all over Darren’s face, and the slightly stiff way he sits down in the old chair across from Darren.  It’s the same feeling churning and roiling in Darren’s gut, making the back of his tongue sour and the insides of his lips bitter and cold.

 

The question is there even if Darren doesn’t want to acknowledge it.  Who is this man now?  Who is he to me and who am I to him and who are we to each other?  Now.

 

_Acknowledge that things have necessarily changed._

 

“Hi,” Darren starts, as he must begin all things in this; tentatively, carefully, fingers pressing lightly to the wound still cut between them.  Time is not the same as healing, nor is it the same as forgiveness.

 

“Hey,” Chris responds and Darren knows he too is pushing and testing, seeing how deep the gulf is between them before he steps over the edge.

 

“Thank you for coming,”

 

Before Chris can say anything more, Jane skips over with a bright smile and a coffee-stained menu.

 

“Hi there!” She chirps and Darren can see in her eyes that she is completely aware of the tension stretched like live wire between himself and Chris.  “Can I get you something to drink?”  Her voice asks Chris while her eyes ask Darren just who the hell this strange new person is.

 

“Uhm, coffee please,” Chris tries to smile back at her, but Darren can see the broken edges of it on his lips.

 

“Coffee coming right up, and let me just say before you spend too long with that menu that our blueberry pancakes are to _die_ for.  Joe adds vanilla and lemon to mix, but don’t tell the guys I told you that, they think it’s just Bisquick!”  Jane winks conspiratorially at Chris before flitting off with a promise to bring Darren more hot water for his tea.

 

Darren watches as Chris takes a deep, calming breath.

 

_It will be hard for the others too, give them the same time they’ve given you._

 

There’s a patch of stubble on his jaw where he missed shaving that morning and his hair looks like he spent at least 15 minutes of the 2-hour drive running his hands through it.  And Darren catches the way Chris’ eyes keep coming back to Darren’s hand, to the band that encircles his finger.

 

“Uhm, so I guess I was surprised that you called,” Chris says, shifting his gaze to the menu that Darren knows by heart.

 

Darren swallows.  He’s practiced what he thinks he wants to say a thousand times since he made the decision to reach out to Chris, but the reality of Chris before him – the notch of his throat and the hair on his forearms – isn’t even remotely the same as Darren’s own reflection staring back at him in the mirror.

 

Darren reaches for his own chest, where a blue painted wooden guitar pick hands from a simple chain around his neck.

 

“Yeah, I – it was time,” Darren says.  The worn wood of the pick is smooth and familiar under his fingers, comforting.

 

“Time for what?”

 

But Jane returns with Chris’ coffee and Darren’s hot water and Darren watches Chris press his lips together in annoyance at the interruption.

 

“What can I get for you two?” Jane asks.  “I’m suspecting your usual,” she says to Darren before turning her sharp eyes on Chris.  Darren knows he’ll be answering some  of her questions later.  “What about you?”

 

“The blueberry pancakes,” Chris orders, still trying to smile.  “You convinced me.”

 

Jane grins at him. “Good decision.” She turns on her heel and disappears again.

  
Darren waits for Chris to add his usual two packets of sugar and healthy splash of cream to his coffee before he starts talking.

 

“A year,” he says.

 

Chris frowns in confusion and Darren can see him doing the math in his head, trying to figure out just what he’s talking about.  Darren counts back the time that’s passed since they last saw each other.  He can think now about that night without wanting the burn of whiskey or the subtler taste of a beer or wine.

 

“It’s been a year since I got sober,” Darren clarifies.  He doesn’t try to hide the pride in his voice.  It’s his greatest accomplishment, though he hopes not his last.

 

Chris sucks in a sharp breath as surprise flashes across his face.  “Oh, that’s…I’m glad.”  He nods, staring at his coffee.

 

“Me too.”

  
Chris lifts his head up at him at that.  The diner seems to go utterly quiet at the look in Chris’ eyes, the look of a man remembering.

 

Darren had spent the three nights at the center unable to sleep because of the quiet.  The bed was huge and the pillows were firm.  The sheets probably cost more than the ones he had on his own bed.  But the room was quite, too quiet.  The whole center just the same. Quiet enough for the wracking guilt in his own heart to beat out loud through the stillness, echoing off the painted walls and ricocheting through his pounding head.  Not the shaking that started in his hands, the sweat that dripped down his back, or the aching rawness in his throat as he vomited again and again were as bad as the awful, killing quiet.

 

_Silence is not the worst sound you can hear._

 

“So, what are you going to do now?” Chris asks and Darren takes the kind of soul deep breath he spent 90 days learning and nine months perfecting.

 

“Try and fix what I broke.”


	2. Step 1: Recognition

Darren knows the moment he stopped drinking to have a good time and started drinking just to make it through to the end of the day without wanting to tear all his skin off.

 

It was a red carpet, another one in the long parade of them that stretched back and back for years.  Endless and overwhelming.  Another gauntlet of lights and cameras and screaming voices crying out for some imagined version of him that was never truly _him_.  It was another moment in a series of moments that made up the fabric of Darren’s life when he had to go with someone he didn’t want to, and didn’t want, and watch as the person he truly wanted to be with stood far and away with someone else.

 

One moment amongst thousands shouldn’t have tipped the balance of his life, but it was never really just the one thing.

 

That late afternoon Darren took a too full shot of bourbon before he got into the shower and another before he got dressed, standing in his bedroom in an old towel dripping water on the carpet and staring at his reflection in the mirror as he lifted the glass to his lips. Behind him on the bed, the suit that had been selected for him was laid out carefully arranged and waiting for him. He poured a third after he tied his shoes because the first two had gone down his throat so easily and he wondered how flushed his face would be beneath the layers of makeup. He threw back a vodka soda in the hired car on the way to the event, ignoring the look sharp glare of disgust from his companion and the narrow-eyed look of concern and disappointment through the rear-view mirror from the driver.

 

By the time they arrived at the crowded edge of the red carpet for an event whose purpose he couldn’t remember, Darren was loose enough to ignore how tight his chest felt beneath the pressed shirt that had been chosen for him.  The jagged version of relaxed he felt with bourbon thinning his blood blurred the sharp lines of how awful it all was, how it had all become when he wasn’t paying attention.  The buzz let him smile with the strain he felt in his wrists, let him wave a hand that bore a ring he wasn’t supposed to talk about, even as the man who owned the paired band walked the same carpet and smiled the same smile a safe distance away from him.

 

One more red carpet shouldn’t have begun the end, but the way things should be and the way are so rarely match up. Darren knows this, and yet knowledge and understanding are not the same when the world operates on a different watch.

 

It falls so easily into a pattern, the way certain destructive things do – long black threads of temptation winding tight around wrists and throats, until the ties are twice-knotted and fingers forget how to unbind them.

 

It’s not that he doesn’t know it’s happening. A bottle of wine cannot drink itself and the third glass of whiskey comes with a cost.  The pieces of Darren are fracturing, shattering, and he forgets how to care.

 

He lets the bartender pour him another drink. He ignores the looks of concern from his friends passed over his head as he pries the cap off another beer and flicks it across the kitchen into the recycling.  He swallows down a swig before ambling onto set and tries not to get mad when he notices that anything remotely alcoholic gets removed from his trailer by the last day of filming.

 

***

 

The end comes as it must.

 

The taut thread snapped at the knot under the last pound of pressure.  The dam bursting at the finally pounding push of the trapped and urgent sea.  The blast of lightning from a fire-charged sky.

 

Some things are metaphors because they are true.

 

And Darren is not alone in this.

 

“I think you’ve had enough,” is what Chris says when they are, for once, both at the same after party at the same time and the drinks are as free as they always are.

 

But “I’m scared” is what he means.  Darren hears both and listens to neither and Chris does not say it again.

 

And Chris does not say anything when Darren comes home at 4am with salt and bitters down the front of his shirt and vomit on his shoes.  He peels the shirt off of Darren with a tenderness Darren probably does not deserve and throws it out with the shoes.  New clothing can always be bought.  Darren lets Chris guide him into the shower and turn the water on just shy of too hot and he stays there as Chris climbs in after him.

 

Chris doesn’t say anything when someone else brings Darren home in the dark dead of night because he could not drive and did not want to call a car.  The drivers are never as discrete as they’re supposed to be and Darren’s reputation is already hanging on the ragged edge of the line.  He’s been seen too many times in too few months with a drink in hand and no life in his eyes for people not to know. 

 

And the town _talks_. He’s heard it. Chris has heard it. They all have. A rumor is only a rumor if it’s not acknowledged.

 

Chris leaves him on the sofa for the rest of the night with his shoes still on and the coffee he brings Darren in the harsh light of the morning should not taste like anger but it does.  Darren can only mumble broken apologies against Chris’ lips and wrists and the inside of his thighs.

 

Apologies Darren has but there are no promises to give. Not anymore.  The tarnished clock has stopped on empty words and the day got late while he was doing other things.

 

And Chris does not say anything when someone reports that Darren’s friends and family are worried about his drinking and that his management is considering sending him to rehab.  Chris holds the truth of the world close to him; this of all things Darren knows the most.

 

_Acknowledge that you have hurt the ones you love and then make amends._

 

But the long year wears on Chris too, Darren knows. He can see it in his eyes every day that Darren stinks of liquor and fading dreams.  He feels it in the way Chris touches him like he’s unsure of the body he’ll find.  He knows that Chris can only take so much before he too breaks, that he should be only asked to deal so much until a ring and Darren’s last promise loses all meaning.

 

And the end must come.  Not with a bang, not with a whisper, but with a sudden fall.

 

Darren doesn’t remember the party and he doesn’t remember getting home and he does not remember the edge of the rug he tripped on. But he comes to uneasy consciousness lying on the living room floor with blood pouring down his chin and dripping onto his chest as Chris comes running down the staircase. He must have made quite the noise when he hit the floor.

 

“Jesus fuck, Darren are you okay?!?” Chris drops to his knees next to Darren as he struggles to sit up.  His head swims and his face throbs.  He’s half a step from throwing up.

 

“I think I fell?” Darren tries to touch his chin, where he’s sure he’s cut, but Chris catches his wrist and keeps his fingers away.

 

“Don’t,” Chris snaps, voice gone sharp and ragged. “Don’t touch it.”

 

Darren tries to focuses his blurred gaze on Chris’ face.  He must have woken him up because Chris’ hair is flat on one side and fluffy on the other and he’s not wearing a shirt.  He follows Chris’ gaze to the bottle of Jack Daniels that is still sitting on the coffee table and Darren does not remember putting that there either.

 

“I,” Darren starts to say, possibly to apologize, but Chris’ face goes shuttered and cold and he drops Darren’s hand.

 

“Don’t,” he repeats.  “Stay here and don’t touch it.”

 

Darren watches as Chris gets up and walks off towards the bathroom.  Tension, anger, and fear holds Chris’ back straight and his shoulders taut and Darren is still with it enough to hate that he’s caused this.  Again.  He hates himself a little in that instant.

 

Chris comes back with a soapy washcloth and Band-Aids and Darren has to look away from the anger in his eyes.

  
He stays quiet as Chris cleans the cut on his chin as best as he can, wiping the blood from his skin and daubing the wound with as gentle a touch as he can muster.  But Darren can see the stress and strain building and building in Chris’ muscles, in the tight press of his lips, and he knows it’s only a moment before it all snaps. As it must.

           

“How the fuck did you let it come to this?” Chris suddenly bites out. “Why didn’t you ask for help before it got this bad?”  And then he is crying, standing up and turning away to try and hide it.

 

Darren swallows heavily and does not know how to answer the very questions he’s asked himself for months.  Maybe longer.

 

He supposed he figured it would just eventually all go away, that the reasons for it would just disappear with the old contracts and final payouts and he’d be able to set aside his shot glasses with his dead obligations and torch it all to the ground.  But it doesn’t happen like that.  A switch is never thrown and his life never suddenly rights itself.

 

The anger lingers.  The resentment burns every time it comes up in an article or an interview, what he said before, what he allowed his life to look like to the outside world.  What he let happen to his career.

 

_Fraud. Liar.  Turncoat._

 

What he did for love.

 

And he doesn’t know how to ask why Chris himself didn’t try to help him sooner.  The time has passed on that question too.  Perhaps one day he will get an answer.

 

Darren pushes himself to his feet, swaying on unsteady legs, but locking his knees to keep himself in place.  He feels like he hasn’t been standing on solid ground for a year, so what’s one more night?

 

“Chris,” Darren prompts.  Trepidation is building in his gut, worry of what they are going to say to each other, what is going to happen.  When he looks back on it, he knows this moment has been coming for longer than he cares to think about.  The inevitably does not make it easier.

 

Chris turns around to him and his cheeks are red and blotchy with anger and streaked wet with tears.  There’s snot under his nose and his eyelashes are clumped together and Darren knows how much Chris hates the way he looks when he cries. This is his fault too.

 

Chris flickers, swift and confusing, and suddenly the half-empty bottle of Jack smashes against the wall in a bright burst of sound and a shower of glass.  Whiskey streaks down, bleeding out amber along the fractals of paint and dripping to the floor.

 

“You’re a fucking mess,” his voice is harsh as any winter Darren has ever lived through.  “Look at you.”

 

Darren doesn’t need a mirror to know how awful he looks,

 

“I’m-”

 

“Don’t you _dare_ fucking say you’re sorry,” Chris nearly shouts.  The sound echoes through the quiet house that they made for themselves.  “Not now. How am I supposed to believe a fucking word that comes out of your mouth when you’re like this? How can I believe anything you’ve said this whole time?”

 

Darren holds his hand out, supplicating. “Look, I _love_ you.  Nothing about that has changed, play?”  It might be the only truth Darren knows any more.

 

Chris sneers and the expression is so ugly on his face that Darren flinches.  “Hasn’t it?

 

And that too is Darren’s heart disintegrating.

 

“I can’t do this, Darren.  I can’t.” Chris shakes his head and takes a step back, folding his around himself.  He is suddenly so vulnerable in his shirtlessness and Darren feels acutely every inch of distance between them.  “Not anymore.  I can’t watch you…you killing yourself like this.  And I can’t be with you if this is what you’re going to do to yourself.”

 

“I can fix this,” Darren stutters.  He starts to take a step forward but Chris shifts away again, away from him, and that is as clear as anything.

  
“I don’t think you can.”

 

Darren watches as Chris takes his ring off – the ring Darren gave to him with the only promise that’s ever really mattered – yanking it off his trembling finger and setting it down on the coffee table. Darren cannot take his eyes away from it.

 

“I need you to get help,” Chris says. “Because I can’t do it for you.”

 

Darren knows this is it, the thing he’s been ignoring with every drink after the first.

 

“You need to go, okay?” Chris voice is wet and Darren still cannot stop staring at the band of silver that should be on Chris’ finger. “You need to go,” Chris repeats and then he’s turning on his heel and disappearing back upstairs.

 

Darren breathes until he’s sure he will not faint. The last recognizable piece of his life is gone and there is no replacing it.  He takes measure of what he once was and what he will never be again. The sum of his parts are more than the eventual cost and less than the inside whole.  And it doesn’t taste a like a storm or the sea or a shard of lightning; it tastes like regret.

 

The end comes and Darren knows then he has to find a new beginning.


	3. Step 2: Recovery

The Sunrise Ranch and Recovery Center sits on more acres of land than Darren can recall from the brochures and website. It stretches out to the edges of his vision, filling everything in his sight.  He’s driven through the desert before, and he cannot recall seeing this place.  It wouldn’t be the first time he missed something important.

 

When Darren steps out of the car at the front entrance, the smell of desert – of sparse grass and dry air and cracked earth – hits him hard.  It smells nothing like home, like the salt of San Francisco or the wet pavement of New York or the over-priced laundry detergent Chris buys because it’s supposed to be good for his skin and the environment.

 

The center looks like a working ranch, as befitting its name, Darren supposes, with a stable and horses and squat, painted workshops set up for its residents.  He swears he can hear the grind of a saw over the whinnying of a horse. It’s almost unreal.

 

A hand on his upper back nudges him forward gently, towards the doors of the main building.

 

Inside it’s air-conditioned, pushing out the dry heat from the desert the way the facility itself is supposed to push out certain dark things from those who willingly step through the doors. A man sits behind the reception counter and he smiles welcomingly at Darren, who cannot find it in himself to smile back.  Not yet. The man does not seem to take offense and Darren supposes that because he is calm he’s probably not the worst patient to approach the counter.

 

“Mr. Criss.  Welcome,” the man says and Darren can only nod.

 

His mom is there, his dad too, handing over his keys and his paperwork even though Darren is signing himself in voluntarily. Everything about this place is voluntary – that was bolded and underlined in the brochures. The point is not that he is forced to be there, that his friends and loved ones have kicked him out and dropped him off on the doorstep alone and shivering.  Darren was the one who found this place, the one who told his parents he was going and asked for a ride there.

 

“If you’ll follow me, Mr. Criss, I’ll take you to your recovery coordinator.  She’ll be the one to facilitate the program with you.”

  
Darren nods.  This is it. His mother hugs him and his dad hugs him even tighter.  He makes them go before he starts bawling like a helpless child in front of the other residents of Sunrise, though he’s sure he wouldn’t be the first. He watches his parents shuffle away, holding hands until they have to let go to get inside in the car, and Darren feels every bitter ounce of shame for all that he’s put them through.

  
_Remember that though the past is fixed, the future is not._

 

With a final wave through the window, the car drives off, sending up a cloud of dust from its tires, and that is that.

 

***

 

Rosa is his recovery coordinator.  She has short hair and kind eyes and doesn’t recoil from the fetid stench of stale alcohol that comes with Darren’s every breath. He can’t help but wonder how much worse she’s seen.

 

Darren sits in her office with his luggage at his feet and his hands in his lap.  His fingers are trembling slightly and he doesn’t know if it’s nerves or something else that keeps him from sitting still.

 

“You’ll be here for as long as you need,” Rosa is saying and Darren likes the cadence of her voice.  “There is no time limit on your recovery.  If you feel like you’d like to check out after a few days, that’s your decision to make, and if you want to stay for several months, that’s up to you.  I’ll be working with you to come to those decisions.”

 

“What if I never want to leave?” Darren asks, only partially joking.  He’s been at Sunrise for all of 20 minutes and he already feels more at ease than he has in the last several years.  Notwithstanding the moments of clarity and calm he had with Chris, but he managed to fuck that up too.  He knows that feeling is going to bleed away as he pisses and vomits the years of liquor burning through his system over the next few days, but for now, he holds onto that bird-wing feeling that flutters in his chest a little like hope.

 

Rosa smiles understandingly at him and he is grateful he doesn’t sense any pity from her.  “Darren, if I do my job right, and you do yours, you’re going to _want_ to leave.”

 

Darren nods and tries not to think about how long that might be.  The website told him that every day at the facility mattered to his recovery, even if all he did was get out of bed.  Darren wants to promise himself he’s going to do more than get out of bed, but his track record with promises hasn’t been the best lately.

 

Rosa tells him about his room and the schedule of the ranch – when the meals are and what kinds of activities he can join. There is therapy if he wants it and doctors if he needs them.  Darren’s pretty sure that what he needs is for someone to help him find the perspective he lost.  And she tells him what the first couple of days are going to be like for him as he goes through withdrawal, how they’re not going to be anything approaching easy, how he’s going to hate every moment of it.

 

“Someone is always going to be here for you,” she tells him, surely seeing the wide-eyed panic that sets across his face. “We are moments away if you need anything, even if all you need is someone to sit with you, or hold your hand. Don’t be embarrassed to ask. It’s why we’re here.”

 

Darren knows the hand he wants is no longer his to hold, and hasn’t been for more months than he cares to think about. He can taste the desire for tequila in the back of his throat and he swallows it down.  At least he’s already admitted he has a problem; admitting he needs a friendly face while he puking his guts out won’t take much more than another piece of his pride. And it’s not like there’s much left of that anyway.

 

“And I’d like for you to take off the ring,” Rosa says and her words don’t make any sense at all.

 

“What?”

 

“Your ring.”  She looks pointedly down at the band encircling Darren’s finger, the very thing that’s been keeping him anchored to everything else in the world.  “I’d like for you to take it off.  For now,” she amends.

 

“No.”  The word is instinctual, as natural as its opposite was when he first slid the ring on.

 

“Darren.”  Rosa doesn’t speak to him like a child or a prisoner, but Darren still feels guilty for defying her already.

 

“It’s not just a ring,” he says and he closes his other hand around his fingers protectively.

 

“I understand that.”

 

_Remember that there are things you can live without._

 

The threads that bind him to Chris are fastened to the ring, even if Chris no longer wears his.  “It’s all I have left.”

 

Rosa’s face softens into something that somehow reminds him of his grandmother.  “I promise you it’s not.”

 

A promise gave him the ring and promise looks to take it away and Darren is pretty sure a promise doesn’t mean much at all when it’s drowning in whiskey and wine.

 

“Do I have to?”

 

Rosa shakes her head and does not hold her hand out for it. “Everything here is done voluntarily, you know that.  But the more you put into the program the more you take with you when it’s time for you to leave.  This is something I’m asking you to try.”

 

“Will I get it back?” Darren asks.

 

“Of course.”

 

“When?”

 

“Well,” Rosa leans forward slightly. “That depends entirely on you.”

  
Darren bites down on his lip as he slowly twists the ring around and around until it slides up over the swell of his knuckle.  It’s the last tie he has.  He’s unknotting the ropes from the anchor and letting himself drift free.

 

“Don’t lose it,” he whispers, knowing how bent and broken his voice sounds, and knowing he’s saying it himself as much as Rosa. The ring is his half of the easiest promise he ever made and he gave that away too.

 

“Never.”

 

***

(1)

 

Darren spends the first night on the bathroom floor, curled around the toilet and shaking himself out of his skin. His stomach feels like a nest of vipers and every time he vomits – hardly more than a thin stream by the end – it’s venom lacing up his raw throat.

 

Rosa’s voice rattles around his pounding head: _“It will be different for everyone.”_

 

Darren doesn’t know how else this could go. His body aches, down to his bones and beyond.  It’s a hurt he fears will never go away.  Sweat pools under his arms and shines on his face and he knows he reeks of 40-year-old Scotch and $2 beers.  He would crawl into the shower, but he can’t, and he worries he might drown if he tried anyway. He remembers watching a special with Chris about the strangest ways people can die and how little water is takes to actually kill you – once it gets in your lungs where it doesn’t belong and it can’t get out.  They sat together on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket with a bowl of popcorn between them and licking butter off each other’s fingers and no cares about anything at all.

 

18 hours into it, Darren hallucinates.

 

He’s lying in the bed, which is surprisingly comfortable, letting the cool desert breeze comes through the open window and wash over his naked body, when he hears it, hears Chris.

 

Darren blinks fuzzily at the ceiling and listens. And it’s the dumbest thing for his brain to throw at him.  Just a conversation they’d had years ago, during the tour, during one of the nights Darren snuck into Chris’ room instead sleeping on the tour bus with the guys.  And he’d climbed into the bed and pulled the covers over their heads and Chris had told him all about this book he wanted to write, and how he’d started it when he had the free time.  And had Darren listened then, too.

 

And he knows it knows it’s not real. Can’t be real. But he hears it all the same, the quiet, nervous breathiness in Chris’ voice, the muted hope in his eyes, the light pressure of his fingers against Darren’s hip.  It’s not real and it’s the thing with wings that starts to lift Darren out of the worst of the night.

 

Darren closes his eyes and listens until Chris stops talking, and he cries over all of the wonderful things he had just for a little while.

 

***

 

There’s no TV and no Internet access at Sunrise. When Darren emerges from his hours of shaking and sweating and vomiting, he spends five short minutes balking at the lack of connectivity.  He so used to having so much at his fingertips at all times that the sudden, absolute silence is a visceral shock to him.  He knows he must have hundreds and hundreds of emails, voicemails and text messages from a thousand different people.  His manager.  His agents.  His publicist.  His friends. The people who think they’re his friends.  He hadn’t told anyone where he was going, leaving it up to his parents to decide who needed to know, who had the right to find out.

 

But his laptop is back at his house and his phone is in a box with his keys and his ring and that’s all there is to it. He doesn’t know what’s being said about this, about him, if anything.  He doesn’t know what the media is saying about him, about Chris, about what’s going to happen next.   He doesn’t know what he’s missing.

 

He feels cut off from the world he once knew, and the world he lost sight of.  But that’s the point.  The facility is an island in the desert, but Darren remembers that he marooned himself here for a reason. And part of that reason is the man back home with a cat and a ring he might very well have thrown away.

 

Darren knows that soon enough he’ll earn the privilege of being able to leave the facility for brief periods of time – just an hour – to go wherever he wants, as long as he comes back.  He supposes he could potentially find a computer if he wanted to, log in to his old life and find out what kind of avalanche is waiting for him.  But he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to chance it, knowing how easily it would be to get caught up in the landslide of calls and texts and the demands of the world he once knew, the demands on his body and his time, his very soul and sanity, and get swept away again.

 

He can’t risk that, not knowing what might be his again if he makes it through this.

 

Instead, he writes Chris a dozen letters he never sends and he doesn’t leave even through the door is always open.

 

 _Choose or be chosen_.

 

***

 

Darren keeps away from the other residents of Sunrise for the first couple of weeks.  He doesn’t do it because he’s anti-social all of a sudden. It’s partly because for the first week he’s in the program he’s too sick and too weak to do anything but linger in his room and curse what’s become of his mad and broken existence. But he can’t deny that it’s also partly because he’s wretchedly nervous about even more people seeing and knowing what’s become of him.  Pride is the hardest of things to let go of.

 

As though the exact same fate hasn’t befallen the rest of them.  And Rosa tells him often that acknowledging the others in his self-same situation helps him acknowledge himself.  That he needs more than the mirror to see his reflection.

 

But he does make something like friends during his stay.

 

Darren recognizes the fellow who spends most of his days out at the stables with the horses, but he doesn’t say anything about it. None of them are celebrities there, not really.  It’s hard to hold onto ego and conceit when you’ve vomited in front of someone and everyone else knows exactly why you’re there.  Darren watches the man canter around and around the field, body loose and relaxed in the saddle in a way it’s not at meal times and Darren knows that at least this man has found the means to help him finally get past the dark and wild thing haunting him.  Darren wonders what it will be for him.

 

He wants it to be music, but knows it won’t be.

  
There’s a women who checks in about two weeks after Darren. Her hair is falling out and she hands over a bottle of pills at the counter.  She catches Darren’s eye across the lobby and Darren knows she recognizes him, can tell by the subtle tensing of her thin shoulders and the way she seems to want to turn away from him, but can’t.

 

But there is too a look of relief on her face that Darren doesn’t understand.  Maybe it’s that she’s glad to see that proof that anyone can be brought low by addiction. Anyone at all.

 

_You are no different than the others who have faced this._

 

Darren smiles gently at her and lifts his hand in greeting.

 

Her name is Frankie and they have dinner together the first night of her stay.  They don’t talk much, over the weeks, but Darren learns how to play chess and he teaches her how to tune a guitar.  It’s the most he can do with music and even that is almost too much.  The weight of the guitar in his hand, the smooth wood of the neck against his palms sends a wash of panic sweating down his back. He doesn’t pick up the instrument again.

 

He remembers playing shows with whiskey and gin hot in his veins and he thinks about the shows he doesn’t remember at all. He remembers the drinks at bars he never had to pay for, how two become three became more, how pats on the back over shots wiped away all the songs he’d had to sing when his throat demanded the aching pull of different notes.

 

No, it will not be music that sees him through his time at Sunrise, and Darren has to accept it.

 

***

(30)

 

When the calendar turns on the first thirty days of Darren’s treatment, Rosa sits him down in her office and asks him if he wants to leave.  She has his file in front of her, with the pages of his progress, but the cover is closed and she’s looking right into his eyes, not down at the data points that make up his life and possible future now. 

 

And sometimes Darren still dreams of a highball, of the remnants of a 12-pack stashed in the recycling, and shards of glass shattered at his feet and glittering in the wavering light of a full moon.

 

He still dreams of an empty bar with one stool and sticky floors and a bartender who wears a thousand faces.  His mother.  Chris.  His manager. A fan.  Himself.

 

Darren looks away from Rosa’s kind eyes and down at his hands, lying steady in his lap.

 

He stays.

 

_The first couple of days are the hardest.  So is the first month.  And every day after that._

 

***

 

Woodworking is listed in the brochure as one of the activities offered by the program and Darren signs up for it because why the fuck not.  His days aren’t fill with much yet, not beyond the meals he forces himself to eat in the main dining hall with the other residents and the piles and piles of books he reads. Sometimes he goes on long hikes through the desert with one of the other counselors, and he offers to do more than his fair share of the custodial duties, but it’s not enough, not when he can hear the out-of-tune twanging of someone else trying to teach themselves how to play guitar.

 

The master craftsman employed by Sunrise is a woman named Beth.  She has grey hair and thick forearms and her eyes are always smiling.

 

“Let me see your hands,” she says by way of greeting, reaching for Darren before he has time to respond or even introduce himself properly.

 

Her own fingers are calloused and scarred and her grip is firm around his wrists as she holds his hands up for examination.

 

“Musician,” Beth decides.

 

Darren forces himself to nod.  “I was.”

 

Her eyes are very keen.  “We have a music room.”

 

“I know.”  Darren fingers curve slightly, as though seeking the neck of a guitar or a violin.

 

“You don’t look like the kind of guy who lived off groupies and coke.”

 

Darren snorts, he can’t help it.  And then he thinks about all the nights on his own tour when he crawled in his dark and cramped bunk and reached for his phone so he could talk to Chris for at least a few minutes before the steady hum of the engine dragged him down into sleep.  And the nights too when he came home from some party or other to find Christ waiting up for him, reading a book in bed, or writing one, glasses perched on his nose and hair ruffled.  How the muted glint of the ring on his finger was the last light in the dark before Darren closed his eyes.

 

All those simple pleasures that, in the end, weren’t so simple after all.

 

“Yeah,” Beth says, appraisingly.  “You’ll do just fine.”

 

Darren spends the first session just learning about the different pieces of equipment in the shop.  He father wasn’t that big of a handyman while Darren was growing up and it wasn’t like they couldn’t afford to just call someone when something needed fixing.  He pushes away the feeling that tells him to just jump right into it; the workshop isn’t a studio and the machines aren’t instruments.  He can’t just pick them up and play them by heart.

 

His first task is to make a box.  It takes him a week and none of the corners are square. It wobbles a little on a flat surface and the lid doesn’t quite line up.   Darren keeps it, setting it on the desk in his room and putting the letters he writes to Chris inside.   When Rosa sees it sitting there during one of her visits she smiles and tells Darren it looks like shit.

 

Beth has other projects for him to do, once they’re both reasonably certain he’s not going to immediately injure himself. There are many hours in a day and plenty of things to do, once he’s able.  He helps fix the windowpane in one of the other resident’s rooms, broken by chair thrown in an understandable rage. And he assists as Beth repairs a section of the fence near the stables and lets one of the horses eat a cube of sugar out of his palm.

 

He likes the focus it takes to run the band and the miter saws.  His fingers come so close to the blade and he _knows_ , he knows how one little slip could so easily end any hope he has of playing the piano again.  Or the guitar. Or the marimba of Chris’ ribs. The cold burn of gin and vodka took his concentration away, his focus, his drive and replaced it with an echoing, sloshing emptiness that only felt like satiation and needed constant replenishing. With that gone, with the barley and hops sweated from his blood, Darren lets the rich scent of cut wood and the sharp grating of metal sheering through pine and oak fill him instead. It helps.

 

And then Beth tells him to make something for himself. He freezes, unsure of what there is left for him to want for himself alone.  He cannot carve himself a new life from the dead trunk of Redwood and he cannot rebuild the links between him and Chris with a hammer and a fistful of nails.

 

But Darren finds a scrap of wood on the floor, shaved off from a larger piece from some other finished project and not yet swept away. And he thinks there is something that he still wants to try, has to attempt.

 

_It’s okay to want things for the future that feel impossible now._

 

It takes him longer than it should to shape and smooth the ragged scrap of leftover pine into the rough shape he desires. But even the sight of the curved edges, so familiar with their degree of arc, puts a smile on his face as he shakes the tension out of his hands.

 

“They don’t give you sober chips here,” Darren says, holding up the crude guitar pick to examine it.

 

“We think the best of you come up with your own reminders,” Beth responds, settling a warm hand on Darren’s shoulder and that also feels like a benediction.  “It’s perfect,” she continues.  “And the next one will be better.”

 

***

 

(60)

 

When the next thirty days expire, Rosa takes Darren out to the diner 20 minutes outside of Sunrise.  She lets him drive her truck and he rolls the windows down and edges just over the speed limit.  The radio plays a dozen songs he knows and Darren works hard to not stop himself from humming.  It’s a quiet sound, barely audible over the howling of the wind and but he hears it, his voice, and he knows Rosa does to.

 

Jane chirps a hello at them both and leads them over to the same booth Darren sat in the last time he was there and the time before that.  She brings decaf coffee for Rosa and herbal tea for Darren before either of them can even ask for it. Darren thinks they they’ve become regulars at this little truck stop diner and he likes it. It makes him feel like he belongs somewhere.

 

Darren orders eggs and toast with hash browns and then he gets a side of fruit because Rosa shoots him a look that tells him man cannot live on carbs and butter alone.  He makes fun of her for ordering oatmeal, but then remembers that she is not the one who checked herself into rehab and figures she probably has a decent handle on her own life.  More than he clearly does.

 

Rosa asks him about his projects with Beth and how he’s been getting along with Frankie, who, Rosa points out, is showing improvement faster than any of them thought she would.  Darren shrugs as though he’s got nothing to do with it, but something like pride and satisfaction begins to seep through him.

 

And then Rosa asks him again if he wants to leave. It’s been two months since his parents dropped him off and h checked in and Darren sits back and thinks about it. About returning to LA and that life and those weary ties.  About all the things that are waiting for him, held back by the doors and walls of the facility and miles of empty desert that surrounds it.  He thinks about Chris, who must still be there in that vast sprawl that calls itself a city, living his life without Darren.

 

And the taste is there again, the burn of whiskey and sour, heavy on his tongue and awful in his stomach.

 

Darren says _no_ , he’ll stay.  A little longer, anyway.

 

Rosa nods like she knew the answer before they got into the car and reaches into her pocket to withdraw a gleaming silver band. Darren swallows heavily, swallows down the old bitter aftertaste as he takes the ring from her with hands that are trembling for reasons completely unrelated to detox.  He doesn’t look to her for reassurance before putting it back on.  The ring slips onto his finger like it never left and Darren wonders for the first time in longer than the cares to think about if maybe, just maybe, not everything is broken beyond repair, shattered in pieces on the floor.

 

And he wonders, vaguely, if Chris, wherever he is, feels the weight of the band echoed against the naked skin of his own finger where his matching ring should be.

 

Darren and Rosa stay in the booth long past the hour curfew and Darren cannot stop playing with the ring that is settled back into place where it belongs.

 

***

 

(90)

 

But there are still pieces of Darren’s life that cannot be ignored.

 

Three months into his program he dreams of song. The nightmares of red carpets and bars and Chris walking away from him as a gleaming ring rolls across a cracked glass table are replaced by light and airy dreams of music.

 

Instead of waking in a cold sweat with a racing heart in the lonely dark of the night, Darren opens his eyes with the pale morning sun peeking around the curtains as the fragments of a song play on the edges of his memory.

 

_Let the necessary things come to you in their own time._

 

He finds Frankie in the music room for their usual Tuesday session. She’s already sitting at the piano with her long, skinny fingers tapping out scales that have become smoother and easier every week.  Darren knows she practices even on days they don’t meet.  He can sometimes hear the faint notes of the piano ringing out through the hallway as every week she grows a little stronger.

 

They all practice, in their own ways, everyone at Sunrise - the man who rides the horses to clear his soul and Darren with his long hours in Beth’s shop.  They all do what they must to find themselves again.

  
There are three guitar picks in his pocket now, each one a little better made than the one that came before.  Darren touches the familiar shape of them with steady fingers and enters the room.  
  
Darren sits down at the piano next to Frankie and thinks about the song from his dream.  It was all at one familiar and strange.  He looks at the worn keys of the piano, the way he knows their spread by heart.

 

He breathes in and reaches out, resting his hands on the keys.   He breathes out. His fingers find their marks without him thinking about it.  Next to him, Frankie is very still and Darren is only concerned with himself.

 

 _In the end is my beginning_ , he thinks and lets his hands do the rest.

 

Darren plays “Hot Cross Buns,” the first song he ever learned, and then he knows.  He _knows_.

 

***

 

His parents come to pick him up.  His dad cries and his mom tells him that he looks good. And when she says it she means it and Darren already knows it’s true.  The mirror told him the circles under his eyes were gone and the scar on his chin had faded almost into nothingness.  Though he doesn’t really mind the small line of white etched into his skin – it too is a reminder of the things he lost. The tattoo he marked on his own body.

 

After the discharge paperwork is signed and the payments are made, Darren hugs Rosa for long minutes and doesn’t even try to pretend like he’s not crying too.  She rubs his back and tells him to keep in touch.  He knows he will.

 

He goes home to San Francisco with his parents and spends a month living out of his old bedroom.  He gets up every morning at 7am because that was wake up at the treatment facility and the routine eases the transition back to “normal” life.

 

_It will feel different.  Different is good._

 

He cooks his mom breakfast and pours his dad coffee and no one turns the TV on.  He fills the weeks fixing little things around the house, things that they normally would have hired someone else to take care of, but never got around to bothering with.  There’s a loose tile in the bathroom that Darren re-affixes and a window blind in his dad’s study that he replaces.  The gutters need cleaning out and the flower beds weeded and he doesn’t need any one at all to explain to him what a metaphor is.  He gets it.

 

When the thirtieth day of his stay at his parents’ home dawns, cool and misty and quiet, Darren scrounges up an old piece of wood left over in the garage from god knows when and makes for himself another guitar pick using tools he didn’t even know that his dad had. This one has a tiny whorl in the center it reminds him of an eye.  He rubs his thumb over it, feeling the grain of the wood, and feels more like himself than he has in a year.

 

The night, after dinner, as Darren is hand washing the dishes even though they have a perfectly serviceable dishwasher, his mom sets his house and car keys down on the counter.

 

“Go home,” she tells him, not unkindly. Her eyes are smiling and so is her mouth.

 

Darren takes a slow breath and lets it out. Hope rises, clean and cool like water.  “Yeah?”

 

She leans up on her tiptoes and kisses his cheek. “Go _home_.”

 

Darren’s heart stutters, because home is Chris’ house, his bed with the sheets they picked out together when Darren wouldn’t stop making fun of everything in the house being blue.  Home is Chris smiling at his attempts to cool his mom’s best recipes and the light in his eyes when he agreed to wear Darren’s ring.

 

But what is home now?

 

Darren throws his clothes back into his bags and gets into his car.  All he can do is find out.


	4. Step 3: Renewal

At the diner in his favorite booth, Darren curves his hands around the mug of tea.  “So…I went home.” It feels like a strange and unsatisfying end to his tale, but it’s the best kind of ending he could imagine.  The second best, that is.

 

Chris nods.  He looks like he’s struggling to take it all in.  Darren understands  “And you stayed there…nine months?”

 

Darren shrugs.  “Yeah, I mean.  I had to put my life back together.  I sort of fucked it up completely.”  He thinks he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, the part where Chris gets mad at him for taking that time for himself, for not calling him until now.  But Chris just nods again, like he understands, or at least is beginning to.  “I needed to figure out what was left that I could put back together.”

 

Chris takes a sip of his coffee that must be cold and Darren knows he does it to give him a spare two seconds to figure out what to say. “So, it doesn’t sound like you had, uhm, the 12-step program thing.”

 

Darren smiles and shakes his head.  “AA is the place that has twelve steps, I think, but rich people don’t go to AA.  That’s _gauche_.  Rich people go to _rehab resorts_.  Technically, I think they’re called Recovery Education and Relapse Prevention Programs.”

 

A smile teases at Chris’ lips and Darren feels it like a victory.  There is still something there between them, ready to be unveiled, he knows it. “You just made that up,” Chris accuses, the smile widening.

 

“Maybe.”

 

The world has changed in a year, but Chris is looking at him the way he used to, with that mix of fondness and exasperation that Darren has loved from the very beginning.

 

“I was told to make the program into something that worked for me,” Darren says, remembering Rosa’s words from the very first day. “So I gave myself three steps instead.”  He holds up three fingers and does not miss the way Chris’ gaze flickers to the ring around one of them. “Three seemed more doable than twelve, anyway.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Myself.  My family.” Darren pauses and reminds himself to breathe. “And you.”  Darren does not want for a drink in that moment, does not need anything but the hope that flashes brilliantly in Chris’ eyes. It’s a fragile thing, hope, and Darren’s destroyed it before.  But this time, this time he knows he’s a better man, and he has better hands to hold it.

 

“And this is step three,” Chris says, voice gone a little faint.  His hands are clasping his own mug so tightly his knuckles are white and Darren wants so badly to take his hand.

 

“Well, I hope so.”

 

“Darren.”  Chris says his name like it’s a warning, a warning to himself that going any farther than this means turning the corner and pushing towards a new _them_.

 

“You can say it,” Darren interrupts. “You can tell it straight to my face. I deserve every fucking word you’ve got for me.  I’ve heard it from my family already.  I made the last years fucking _hell_ for you. For a lot of people. I was embarrassing. I was awful.   I was completely shit-faced and fucked up. I _know_ that.   There’s nothing you can tell me that I haven’t told myself, but if you need to say it, I want you to.  I’m not going to give you some big changed man speech because I’m not.  I’m still _me_ , but I know I’m a better me than I was.  Tell me what you need to tell me.”

 

And it’s its own kind of benediction to say it out loud, to tell the man he promised to spend his life with that the past is a different country and the future is the thing he’s holding on to.

 

“I should have helped you,” is what Chris says instead and that too is another piece of Darren locking back into place.

 

“Chris.”  And this is a conversation that will take another year to have, but the fact that they’re starting it means _everything_.

 

“Don’t,” Chris cuts him off and then he reaches across the table to rest his hand on Darren’s arm.  Darren shocks at the long-missed touch and tears of a whole other kind gather behind his eyes.  “Don’t try and brush aside my part in this.  I fucked up too.  I didn’t do enough for you when I should have.  I should have done _more_. Something.  Anything.  But I didn’t.  I didn’t know _how_ and I didn’t try. And I’m _sorry_.” Chris grips his arm tightly and Darren closes his eyes against the flood of _everything_ he feels in that moment.

 

When he opens his eyes Chris is staring right at him and Darren does not blink.

 

 _The ones who matter will still be there.  If they are not, they didn’t matter at all_.

 

“Darren,” Chris says, after a long moment that consists of little more than them staring into each other’s eyes and breathing. “I want you to call me.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

Chris reaches under the collar of his shirt and withdraws a chain, which has a well-known ring hanging from it.  _His_ ring.

 

Darren chokes on a soft, unexpected sob and does not bother to stop the tears that tracks down his face.  His every nightmare during his time at Sunrise has not come true.  There is hope and then there is _this_.  And this is more than he dared to let himself dream. Until now.

 

“You kept it,” he says with wonder.

 

“Of course I kept it,” Chris responds, smiling at him as his thumb traces the shape of the ring.  “I’ll always keep it.”

 

And Darren cannot help but wonder if Chris will ever wear it again, if his finger will remember the weight of the band and the promise behind it, but it’s not quite the time to ask.  The repairs are being made, the threads between them retied with every passing moment they spend together.

 

But it is there, the tapestry of their life that Darren once thought he’d burned to ash, rewoven before his very eyes. Thread by thread. Step by step.

 

Darren rests his hand on top of Chris’ and cannot stop smiling.

 

***

 

(365)

 

Darren comes to wakefulness slowly, in measured beats. It’s grey and raining and the pattering of it against the windows almost lulls him right back to sleep. But there is a warm hand on his hip and lips against his shoulder and Darren breathes himself awake.

 

“You had to pick the one day it rains,” Chris murmurs low and intimate into his skin.

 

Darren grins against the pillow before he rolls over, excitement pushing aside the last of his sleepiness and twisting warm in his belly. “I did no such thing,” he counters.

  
Chris is propped up on his elbow next to him and their legs are still tangled together under the sheets.  His eyes are smiling and his hair is complete mess.  “Oh, so that sound I hear isn’t our wedding getting rained out?”

 

Darren shakes his head and fits his hand over the shape of Chris’ ribs.  “Nope.”

 

“Interesting.”

  
“Isn’t it?”  Darren yawns widely and loudly, just because he knows it will make Chris roll his eyes. “Just…call everyone and tell them to come over.”

 

Chris lays back down, winding his arms around Darren and pulling him in close.  Darren fits himself right into the empty spaces of Chris’ body that still feel carved out just for him.  “And tell them what?” Chris asks.

 

“Wedding’s here.”  Darren rubs his nose into the soft curve of Chris’ throat. “Tell them it’s raining and we’re not going to bother with the outdoor thing.  Because rain.”  It’s reason enough as any to not bother with anything more.

 

Chris sweeps his hand up Darren’s naked back and Darren can feel the slightly cooler metal of his ring against his skin. “Yes.  I’m sure they’ll love that.  After all that planning your mom did.”

 

Darren snorts and presses his lips to the thin, bare skin at the base of Chris’ throat.  “Of course they will.  And mom won’t care.  Oh, and tell them to bring food.  I’ll play a couple tunes, we’ll say our ‘I dos.’  Easy peasy. Little rain don’t matter.” Darren burrows deeper into the circle of Chris’ arms and doesn’t miss the kiss Chris presses to his hair.

 

“Do you really want people to just come over here?” Chris asks and he doesn’t sound like he hates the idea.

 

And Darren thinks about their family and closest friends crammed into their living room while he and Chris exchanges what are no doubt going to be ridiculously sappy and sentimental vows before proceeding to stuff their faces with cake and dance until dawn.  He thinks about his mom in the kitchen wrangling the food with her soft-voiced precision while Chris’ dad takes photos of everything.  He thinks about Chris putting a new ring on his finger and singing the paperwork that names them married while standing in the safety and comfort of their very own home.

 

It sounds perfect.

 

Darren wriggles back a bit, propping himself up on his elbows so he can look at Chris, whose eyes are very blue grey morning light. “I, yes, it’s just supposed to be a big party anyway.  So we have it here at home instead of under a tent outside in the rain.  Your mom will like that.  We’ll dig up some chairs and hide all the lube,” Darren pauses while Chris snorts.  “It’ll be fun.  And hey, this way definitely no paparazzi!  Bonus points all around.  Is that okay with you?”

  
Chris smiles and brushes his fingers across Darren’s stubbly jaw and through his hair, tugging a little on the ends of his curls, grown longer every week. “Whatever you want, I’ll be there.”

 

Darren grins and surges up to kiss an “I love you” against Chris’ mouth.  Chris arms wrap tightly around him before rolling him over and covering his body with his own.

 

Later, they’ll open their doors to friends and family and more food than any of them can eat in a week.  Darren will shrug off his jacket 30 minutes into it and Chris will lose his tie somewhere in the kitchen.  The furniture will be pushed aside to make room for a party and Darren will turn his own wedding into a concert until Chris takes the guitar from his hands and makes him dance with him.  There are some traditions even Chris won’t ignore.

 

It will be raining but it won’t matter because Darren’s been through enough to know that a little rain doesn’t matter at all when you’ve got someone to walk the steps of a long life with you.  He took the last three alone, but he knows the rest – until the end – will happen with Chris.


End file.
